


Once, We Were Gods

by harpydora



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Angst, Beta OT4, Multi, Post-Sburb, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:52:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harpydora/pseuds/harpydora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your first thought is, strangely, <em>I don't know the first thing about getting bloodstains out of carpet.</em></p><p>Your second thought is, not-strangely, <em>There's no winning this game. It's only different kinds of losing.</em></p><p>Your third thought is, <em>Where's that sobbing coming from?</em></p><p>Then you realize it's you.</p><p>(A study of the lives of four Sburb players as they learn to live after the game.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started NaNoWriMo with the intent of working on my original fiction. Then this idea (loosely inspired by a kinkmeme prompt I have since lost) moved into my head. It has since morphed into my NaNo project. I am trying to finish it, but I make no guarantees. It's basically my brain's love letter to damaged kids being really tangled up inside. :B
> 
> (As an aside, I will be adding pairing tags as they occur in the story.)

Your name is **JOHN EGBERT** , and, with the help of your friends, you have just claimed the **ULTIMATE PRIZE**. The first few minutes after this event are possibly some of the best in your life. You're in your room, and it is exactly as you remember it being when you went to bed on the night of April 12, 2009. Everything is in it's place, nothing is damaged, everything is peaceful; for a few moments, you just lie there and soak it in.

Eventually, though, you get fidgety with the need to check on the others. You roll off your bed and hop into your computer chair, bringing up Pesterchum. In quick succession, you see Dave's, Jade's, and Rose's chumhandles light up. You don't hesitate to open a memo (creatively titled "WE DID IT!!!") and invite them all in.

EB: oh my god, we're home!  
EB: i mean, i'm home, are you guys home?  
EB: tell me you guys are home!   
GG: yup i am back home too!!!   
TT: I seem to be home as well.   
TG: shitty apartment: check   
EB: we did it you guys! we have a planet again! and it's just like we left it!   
TG: ...   
TT: Is something wrong, Dave?   
TG: bros not here   
GG: come to think of it  
GG: i havent seen bec or grandpa either.... :(   
TT: Hmm. I have yet to catch whiff of Mother's gin. This bears further investigation.   
TG: brb   
EB: me too...

You push away from your desk, heart suddenly pounding in your chest. Of _course_ Dad's here. You can't imagine a world without him, and it's obvious that your prize was built based on your wish for things to be back the way they were, as if the game hadn't happened. That had been everyone's wish, in the end. Hadn't it?

Almost like a ghost, you drift through the house, wandering from room to room and looking around. It only takes a few minutes to cover most of the house, at which point you decide to widen your search to include the yard and driveway. You spend most of this time holding your breath or chewing anxiously on your cheek, but Dad is nowhere to be found. The only sign of his presence you can find are the multitude of half-eaten birthday cakes lying around the house and a large, unscarred harlequin doll lying on the couch.

This leaves only one last place he could be (you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he can't have left the house). Stiffly, you climb the stairs again. Your heart's still pounding, and the sound of the blood rushing in your ears drowns out everything else. The world narrows to that sound and the doorknob of the last door in the house you haven't opened. Your hand reaches for it, and you watch almost like you're seeing everything at a distance, like on a TV. Dad _has_ to be in his room. He just _has_ to.

The door swings open silently. The whole room is exactly like you remember it when you first dropped in to collect some grist.

Well, almost.

Dad's here. He's exactly like you remember him, too. Just not from April 12, 2009.

Your first thought is, strangely, _I don't know the first thing about getting bloodstains out of carpet._

Your second thought is, not-strangely, _There's no winning this game. It's only different kinds of losing._

Your third thought is, _Where's that sobbing coming from?_

Then you realize it's you.

*

EB: guys...?  
EB: i  
EB: i found dad

TG: what the fucking fuck  
TG: what sort of shitty ass  
TG: fucking  
TG: FUCK

TT: ...  
TT: I had somewhat hoped that it would have been easier the second time.  
TT: I see I was incorrect.

GG: im so sorry :'''(

*

The next five years of your life are the darkest. You spend this period in and out of foster care while the court decides what to do with your father's estate. You know that Jade fairs all right; she lived alone on the island for most of her life, and she already had access to her grandfather's considerable assets. However, Rose and Dave also share your fate, and your contact with them is spotty at best.

The nightmares start almost immediately and come as absolutely no surprise. In the snippets of conversation with your friends that you're able to claim, you find that you aren't the only one having problems sleeping. Rose has night terrors any time she falls asleep when it's not daytime; Dave just can't fall asleep until he's run himself ragged because of the ticking he hears at all times; Jade can't stay asleep for more than an hour at a time before she's suddenly jerked awake by the sensation of falling. It's hard at first, but you quickly learn how to like coffee and avoid invitations to sleep-overs.

You stumble through high school, putting in enough effort to get you in the top fifty of your class. You try to make friends, but none of them particularly care for Nic Cage or fine cinema or (if you're being honest) you're solemn demeanor. This is not to say that you aren't cheerful, but there's an undercurrent of sadness that you can't ever seem to cover. It isn't helped by the major misstep you make in freshman year, when you decide to open up to an acquaintance about why you're so sad. The three weeks you spend hospitalized (due to a supposed "psychotic episode") almost send you to summer school, but you manage to dodge that bullet by buckling down the rest of the semester. It also teaches you not to talk about your experiences in Sburb to anyone who wasn't there. Which narrows your list of people you can really open up to down to Jade, Rose, and Dave.

You keep the trolls' trolltags in your Pesterchum window, but they never light up, and you know they never will. They claimed their own prize, separate from yours, and the connection to their universe through paradox space was severed. But you can't bring yourself to remove them. It feels like it would be betraying the memory of everything you did together. So sometimes you stare at them when none of your friends are online, and sometimes you send them messages anyway.

Near the end of high school, shortly after your eighteenth birthday, Rose e-mails you, Jade, and Dave an address, a date, a time, and the confirmation number for a plane ticket. The date is three days after your graduation. You check the ticket through the carrier's website. It's one-way. You don't even bother reading the attached explanation before you start packing your things. (You do read it eventually, though, and it says everything that you'd hoped to hear: Rose has access to the trust fund her mother set up for her and has used that money to secure living space for the four of you in New York City. Together.)

After your graduation, you politely bid farewell to your foster family. They accept your goodbyes with bewildered expressions, and they wish you a safe trip. You thank them because they were never bad people and they always treated you kindly. But now, for the first time since you turned thirteen, you're going home.

*

You're the last to land in New York, but that's all right; it means that you have people waiting for you when you pick your way through the crowds to the baggage carousel. They don't need signs (though Jade has one anyway that is decorated in frogs and hearts and lots of shoutpoles) for you to spot them immediately, and you feel your heart fill up with all sorts of emotions you thought you'd forgotten how to feel since you beat the game.

Dave is the first one you see, and it's no surprise because he's gotten so tall since you were thirteen. He's shot up like a weed, but he hasn't filled out as much as you did and he's developed that unfortunate slouch that you've noticed some tall people have. He still has his trademark sideburns and shades, though, and he still dresses like an ironic douchebag. You notice Jade next, not because she's second tallest but because she is jumping up and down and waving her sign around. She hasn't changed that much either, other than being taller and having more boobs and hips, of course. Next to her is Rose, who comes up to Dave's shoulder (which would make her about even with you, you'd guess) and looks like an almost androgynous deity carved out of marble.

When you finally make it over to them, you're pulled into the biggest, warmest group hug you've ever experienced. Jade's arms are around you first, and she plants her lips firmly on your cheek and starts giving you the sloppiest of sibling smooches. Rose is next, pulling you and Jade close and resting her head so she's cheek-to-cheek with the both of you, and you can feel her smile against your face and it's probably the _best feeling ever_. Dave completes the group hug by just slinging his arms around all of you and resting his chin on the top of your head.

You can't help it; you start laughing. It's not that anything in particular is funny, it's just that you're so happy to be welcomed into the arms of your closest friends that you can't hold all the happiness inside anymore. You feel Rose's lips twitch, and Jade starts giggling, too. "All right, what the fuck is so funny?" Dave asks, and it kind of tickles because you can feel his voice vibrating in his throat, so you only laugh harder.

Eventually, you pull yourself away from your friends, giant goofy grin on your face, and really look at them. You can tell they've changed (other than the obvious things the puberty-fairy did for them), just like you know you've changed. Jade's grown her hair out and braided it so it hangs down to below her waist, and you can see where Rose has probably helped her hide the dark circles under her eyes with concealer. Rose grew her hair out, too, but the change isn't nearly as dramatic as with Jade, and her makeup is pretty much impeccable. She's so slender now, not the awkward pre-pubescent skinny you remember, like a graceful willow or something equally gothic and pretty. Dave's changed the most, though, you think. You all have scars from when you kept dying (you know because you asked when you noticed the knots of white scar tissue on your abdomen from where you got shown some stabs), but Dave... all of his visible skin is sprinkled with freckles or scars (except his face, which is just freckles, thank god), and it kind of scares you a little to think about all the ways he could've gotten them. He also has a little worry-line between his eyebrows that you know he didn't have before.

"Well," says Rose, politely clearing her throat to gather everyone's attention, "now that we're all present and accounted for, I motion that we load John's belongings with the rest and make our way back to our new dwelling. Then we can celebrate."

Jade nods vigorously, which makes her braid bounce in a way that makes you want to start batting at it like a cat. "Hell yes! Let's get this show on the road!" She shoves one of your bags at Dave, shoves another into your arms, and scoops up the last one herself, smiling.

You all walk out of LaGuardia into the early summer heat and catch a shuttle back to Rose's vehicle. You aren't sure what exactly you were expecting, but it definitely wasn't the shiny black SUV she unlocks with the push of a button. As if reading your mind (and maybe she can, since you still hear the call of the wind sometimes), she smirks. "It was a graduation gift from my adoptive parents. Not my first choice, but I am glad for the cargo space in this situation." At the push of another button on her keychain, the back hatch popped open, and you, Dave, and Jade pile your bags on top of the ones already inside.

Jade, now free of your bag, hops over to the passenger-side door. "Shotgun!" Dave groans.

"You are so lucky I don't get carsick, Harley," he grumbles, as if this is some sort of long-standing war and he's spent most of his time on the losing side. And maybe it is, or maybe it will be. There's no way to know for sure except to keep riding in the car with them, and that thought makes you smile. Dave shakes his head and opens the passenger-side rear door for you. "Get in, Egbert. Evidently, we got places to be." You can't help but smile even wider at hearing the warm burr his Texan upbringing gives his words.

"Pfft, you are _so_ wrong," you say as you hop up into the back seat. "The only place I have to be is with you guys." And it's the truth.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is **DAVE STRIDER** , and you are finally **HOME**. It feels like each agonizing second of the previous five years has been leading up to this particular moment as you cross the threshold of the pretty swank New York apartment Lalonde rented for you all. You keep a tight grip on your bags, so tight that you can feel your hand trembling. But it's the only way you can make sure you don't drop it (and subsequently what little photography and mixing equipment survived your trip through DFPS custody). For a moment ( ~~fourteen seconds~~ ), you're struck dumb by how huge the place is, but the moment is broken when Egbert opens his mouth.

"Oh, wow, this place is nice!" he says, and you can see out of the corner of your eye that he's got this goofy wide-eyed look plastered on his face. He's right, though, it's really fucking nice, with sideboards and doilies and a huge-ass sofa covered in knit throws in front of a huger-ass flatscreen. The kitchen is all shiny brushed steel appliances with a gas range, and there's even a breakfast nook.

"Where can I stash my gear?" you ask. Mostly you just want to set it the fuck down before you get a case of the vapors and start swooning. Shit, is that a fainting couch over there? Jesus, Lalonde _actually owns a fainting couch_. Despite yourself, you snicker.

Lalonde gestures vaguely toward the hallway that's to your right. "Unfortunately, I could only secure a two-bed/two-bath affair, but I thought that it would be simple enough for Jade and myself to share the master bedroom while you and John share the other bedroom. Don't worry, brother dear, I made sure you have separate beds." The little smirk that crosses her face fills you with less confidence than an armless football goalie.

John's off like a shot, running for the room you'll be sharing for the foreseeable future, and you saunter after him. When he throws open the door to your room, you see that goofy wide-eyed look again, and now you _really_ don't trust Lalonde's furnishing choices. You nudge John aside with your shoulder so he'll stop blocking your door and let you get a look at your bedroom.

It's pretty plain, all things considered. There's two desks on opposite walls, a large dresser, a bookshelf, and, in one corner, an IKEA bunk bed. Each mattress has a pile of bedding on it, and there are two comforters laid out on the bottom bunk. One is a My Little Pony comforter, the other features that crappy knock-off green ghost slime. You don't bother rolling your eyes (who'd see it behind your aviators?), but you do go for the scowl. "Seriously, Lalonde?"

"Dibs on the top bunk!" John declares, throwing his bags in one corner and pulling himself up. "Rose, how'd you know?"

From the door, you can hear Lalonde laugh. "Just a lucky hunch, I suppose."

You snort. "Whatever. S'not like I'm gonna be sleeping anyway."

"Aww, come on, Dave, this is a totally new place!" says John, giving you these huge blue puppy-dog eyes. You thought Jade was the part-dog twin, but fuck, John's got that look down pat. "Don't be so negative. Things are different now! You don't know how it's going to be yet. Give it a chance!"

Ugh, there's physically no way for you to resist his onslaught of cheerfulness, so you just sigh and shrug. "I guess. Hey, Lalonde, what're we gonna do about food? It's been like eight hours since breakfast."

You hear Jade in the hall, "Wimp! I haven't eaten since before I crossed the international date line!"

Lalonde laughs. "We're in New York City. I am relatively certain that we can find some way to feed ourselves."

*

With everything NYC has to offer, somehow you all end up huddled over six large pizzas from some hole-in-the-wall joint down the street. It's good pizza, you can't deny that (though you didn't get to try the peperoni since Jade and John practically inhaled it), but you kinda figured that you'd do something classier to celebrate now that you have the opportunity. You aren't going to complain, though.

Of course, once he's put away practically his weight in greasy cheese, Egbert pipes up with this bright idea that you should all build a blanket fort and watch movies. "To break it in as home properly," he explains, and you can't find it in your heart to give him shit about how corny that sounds because he looks so goddamn _earnest_ when he says it. Harley seconds the motion, naturally, because she's just as much of a gigantic kid as her ecto-twin is. What really surprises you is when Lalonde agrees, and the motion is carried without you saying a goddamn word.

It doesn't surprise you when Lalonde pulls out a bunch of knit afghans to use for the blanket fort. You guess that she reacted much the same way you did when she left home: buried herself in her hobbies and kept her head down. She sure as shit had enough of her handiwork to fill five years' worth of time in hell. The fort turns out to be pretty fucking hilarious, a mish-mash of Squiddle patterns, gothic floral designs, and some truly horrendous geometric patterns she probably put together to terrorize her foster family's sensibilities.

With the fort built, Egbert declares it movie time. It turns out that his taste in movies hasn't changed much. The rest of the night is a blur of Roland Emmerich atrocities and Nic Cage crimes against humanity, but you don't have it in you to do more than deliver perfunctory griping. Your focus isn't on the movies. You're all in the fort huddled shoulder-to-shoulder around the gigantic bowl of popcorn Rose provided for you.

John's in the middle with the bowl, and a part of you kind of wonders if there's ever been a time where he wasn't the center of your group. He was pretty much a natural-born friendleader, and you couldn't think of anyone who mattered who ~~hadn't already followed him to hell and back just because he asked~~... No, you're not going there. He's shoulder-to-shoulder between you and Rose, and Jade's kinda sprawled out on top of the three of you with her hand buried in the popcorn bowl, and you think that this is pretty much how it's always been.

You make it throught _2012_ , _Stargate_ , and half of _Independence Day_ before you doze off.

It scares the everloving crap out of you when you wake up, but you keep that shit locked down tighter than a nun's panty drawer on Valentine's Day. The only thing you do that might give you away is the sharp intake of breath right before your eyes snap open. It's the middle of the night ( ~~internal clock says 4:13 AM~~ ), and the only things you can hear are three other people snoozing away. At some point, the blanket fort caved in on the four of you, so now you're just a tangled mass of limbs and colorful yarn dotted with popcorn shrapnel.

It kind of weirds you out. It's the first time in years that you've fallen asleep without having to run yourself ragged. You carefully disentangle yourself from the cuddle-puddle and snag both John's and Jade's glasses, which you set gently on the coffee table. Then you climb up onto the sofa, pull your knees to your chest, and watch.

The DVD player and ginormous TV had been turned off sometime after you passed the fuck out, which leaves the apartment in the soft almost-darkness that comes from city living. A little bit of orange-sodium-glow seeps through the blinds and outlines everything well enough for you to know what's what. Not that you care about anything but the pile of blankets and friends sleeping soundly on the floor.

The sounds of the city below drift up, and you admit that they're a little comforting. Not as comforting as the three different snores (John's is sort of muffled, but you can tell he might be a problematic roommate; Jade only snores every once in a while; and Rose's breath is almost completely even except for an occasional mumble), but it's nice and familiar and reminds you of the good times you had before... well, just before.

Eventually ( ~~around 5:08 AM~~ ), Rose stirs. It's just a subtle shift in her breathing, followed by the rustle of cloth as she slithers out of the Egbert-Harley-blanket disaster. In the dim light, you can tell she's looking at you, and you'd almost swear her eyes glow just a little in the dark. In case she can see your expression, you put on a sardonic smirk for her and mumble, "'Mornin', Lalonde."

She nods at you, a faint motion of her chin. "I'm surprised you're awake," she says. Her voice is even. As usual, you can't tell what she's thinking, but you're pretty sure there's some hidden meaning to her words.

"I'm not surprised." It's true. "Kinda surprised I slept, actually." Also true. "Figured my stamina versus shitty movies was stronger. Guess it atrophied when Egbert couldn't pester me until I watched random crap on Hulu with him anymore." You think she'll let the subject slide, since you already gave her two bits of fact before slipping back into ironic banter.

"I admit, I am also surprised," she says, not even acknowledging your last comment. "It is very rare for me to fall asleep after the sun has set, yet I have done just that."

You both lapse into a silence that you're not really sure you can call comfortable. It's not _uncomfortable_ , exactly, but the weight of the past few years presses down on the both of you too hard for it to be comfortable, either.

Finally, you say, "D'you think you can teach me how to use that fancy-ass coffee maker without waking up the bucktooth-twins?" It's the best you can offer in the face of all the things neither of you are willing to talk about. You refuse to let it feel like a cop-out.

You see a small smile creep onto her face. "Yes. Of course."

*

The next few weeks see your new household develop something that might pass for a routine, given certain parameters for said word.

It's never officially stated, but you all come to the agreement that your day starts with breakfast together. Nine times out of ten, Lalonde or Egbert are the ones who make it, but sometimes Harley will get a wild look in her eyes and make some franken-breakfast monstrosity that still somehow tastes amazing. You've been banned from the kitchen entirely unless you're supervised by at least one other resident.

There's no particular structure to your afternoons. Sometimes you job hunt, together or individually. Sometimes you play video games, together or individually. Sometimes Rose and John lie around the apartment and complain about the heat while you and Jade just look at them and shake your heads because they don't even know what "heat" really is.

Without fail, you are all always back in the apartment in time to eat dinner. It isn't always home-cooked, and you don't always eat in (in fact, some of your personal favorites have been when Harley demands the four of you get dressed up and go to a fancy restaurant), but you always do it together. Then there's an hour or two when you all watch TV or some shitty movie.

Usually, you watch whatever, then everyone says good night and goes back to their rooms and does whatever (Egbert usually reads webcomics on his laptop on the top bunk ~~while you usually pretend to mix shit until he falls alseep; then you stop pretending and just keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall off his stupid top bunk~~ ). Sometimes someone falls asleep, usually Egbert, sometimes you. When this happens, it's become an unspoken rule that everyone's sleeping on the couch that night in whatever they're wearing. Everyone learns pretty quick to change into PJs after dinner.

Sometimes, you wake up in the middle of the night (usually the same time every night), and you slide out from under the Egbert-Harley-Lalonde pile-up and go to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee. You're really good at brewing it without waking anyone up. When it's ready, you take it back to the couch, sit down next to your ecto-sis, and wait for the sun to rise.

All in all, life's all right.


	3. Chapter 3

Your name is **ROSE LALONDE** , and you are slowly learning that you are **NOT NORMAL**. Well, that is perhaps a bit silly. Of course you aren't normal. Normal people do not participate in the apocalypse, then rebuild the universe in the image of their choosing after spending time with aliens from a separate but concurrent universe. This isn't even taking into consideration your odd hobbies, quirks, likes, dislikes, and the handful of years you spent drifting in and out of the mental health-care system.

No, perhaps it would be better to say that you are slowly learning that you may, in fact, be fundamentally broken in ways you had not previously foreseen. One of the most recent indications comes when you finally acquiesce to Dave's request to go bar-hopping one Saturday evening. Your initial reaction is, of course, to advise against it, but you can't really argue with his logic ("C'mon, Lalonde, this is fucking _New York City_. We've been here two months already and we haven't scoped out the music scene." To which Jade had added, "Yeah, and we haven't gone out out-out in a couple of weeks! We are way overdue!").

Dave does a little research and chooses which establishments you will visit, a list which you force him to revise when you refuse to allow him to acquire fake IDs. Your objections have less to do with morals than they do with concern for his welfare; you clearly remember certain conversations about a juvenile criminal record that had been expunged after his coming of age, and you do not wish to encourage a lapse into potentially risky behavior. Not when you'd worked so hard to craft your home. He returns with a much shorter list that you can all legally enter, and with that your itinerary is set.

When Saturday night comes, Jade insists that you all dress appropriately, which seems to entail tight pants and/or short skirts and/or low-cut tops and/or shiny pleather and/or animal prints. You, John, and Dave all veto this idea, but you eventually reach a compromise in which John and Dave wear skinny jeans and fitted t-shirts, and you don a simple cocktail dress that shows off your collar-bones and flashes your thigh if you feel like being indiscreet. Jade wears leggings and a scoop-necked top with sequins that frames her relatively prodigious cleavage. It is very pleasant cleavage, and you mentally tip your hat to whomever designed the bra she's wearing.

Unsurprisingly, you catch Dave doing the same.

Somewhat surprisingly, you have the sudden intuition that John may be doing so, as well.

Fascinating. You file that piece of information away for later analysis. It hadn't yet crossed your mind that you may get to study the Westermarck Effect (or rather, lack thereof) personally.

You arrive at your first bar just before the band advertised on the chalk-board outside takes the stage. Dave's timing is, as always, impeccable. He points you at two small tables near the back surrounded by high stools before sidling up to the bartender and placing (hopefully non-alcoholic) drink orders. John and Jade claim one table, and you take the other, leaving the outside stool free for your brother. Rather, that is your plan. Like many plans, its execution is often a far cry from its original form.

Before Dave can flag the bartender's attention and place your drink order, a skinny young man slides into the stool next to you and folds his hands together on the table. He's likely your age, perhaps a little older, and he has the carefully cultivated androgynous look of a proto-goth much like you once were in your younger days. His skin is dusky, his hair naturally dark, and his facial features accented by a handful of well-placed piercings. He wears an easy, lopsided grin. "Hey."

You don't need a keen interest in psychology or the title of Seer to know why he's here. A quick side-long glance out of the corner of your eye confirms that John and Jade are too involved in their private conversation to notice or care that Dave's seat has been usurped. On impulse, you turn to the newcomer and smile. "Good evening. I don't believe we've met."

He shakes his head. "We haven't. But I thought you looked like the kind of gal who might be interesting to know. I'm Dimitri."

He offers one hand, which you politely take. "I'm Rose."

His fingers are cool, and he brings your knuckles to his lips in a gesture that you're sure he thinks is charming. "A pleasure, I'm sure. Tell me, what brings such an elegant woman such as yourself to a dive bar like this?"

Ah, so this is what it's like to be chatted up. You decide to go along and see how it plays out. "Familial obligations, I'm afraid. My brother convinced our friends and I to accompany him on a tour of New York's seedy underbelly for the sake of his musical inclinations." You cock your head in the direction of the bar, where he is gathering the drinks (decidedly _not_ non-alcoholic, as you had hoped) to bring to your tables.

Dimitri laughed. "You're definitely too well-spoken to waste your time here. Most of the regulars are lucky to form words longer than three syllables. You must owe your brother big-time to let him talk you into coming here."

This gives you pause. There is a part of you which easily estimates what the normal call-and-response of this conversation should be: "Oh, not really, it was just his turn to pick our destination this week." "Well, may I buy you a drink?" "Certainly." "What do you say we slip away to get some coffee and escape the terrible band?" "That sounds lovely." But that path seems somehow... disingenuous. It's the path you trod with your superficial "friends" and your parents' army of therapists to stay out of trouble. It's not the sort of thing you wish to stay in the habit of doing.

After a moment's consideration, you choose the path less often traveled, at least by yourself. "Yes, it's a safe assumption that I owe my brother quite a lot, but that has little to do with why we came here. It was simply his turn to choose what our household did with our Saturday night, and he brought up valid points about taking in local musical acts."

Seemingly taken off-balance by your unwillingness to adhere to the script, Dimitri quirks an eyebrow and leans forward, inching into your personal space. "Your household?"

Dave chooses this moment to pull another stool up to your table, claiming a seat on your other side and scooting in close. He pushes a plastic cup of something bright and fruity-smelling in front of you and leans in to stage whisper, "This bozo botherin' you, Lalonde?"

You pick up the drink and swirl it around before taking a sip. It's strong and sweet, possibly a passive-aggressive gesture, but you will have to wait to determine that later. "Not at all. We are simply discussing the finer points of spending one's Saturday at this establishment in an attempt to become more familiar with each other. Unless I was mistaken, Dimitri?"

The young man smiles, though he aims it more at Dave than you. Interesting. He views Strider as a threat to your conversation, but to what extent? It's obvious to anyone with two eyes (or an alien physiology and a functioning nose) that your brother is asserting himself as a protective force. It is less obvious what type of protective force he's styling himself as.

"Well, you were going to tell me a little bit about your-- er, living arrangements," Dimitri says, his voice tinged with sardonic humor. "Then I was going to ask what you liked to do when your 'familial obligations' don't tell you to come to crappy bars, and maybe ask for your phone number by the end of the night."

The effect the words have on Dave is immediate, if subtle. His lips twitch slightly, and one hand comes to rest lightly on your arm in a show of possessiveness. "Back off, grubfucker. No one invited you to our party." The slip into troll terminology catches you off-guard; something about Dimitri has set Strider off in the worst way.

You set your drink down and slip your hand over his in what you hope is a calming gesture of solidarity. "I hardly think this young gentleman warrants a 'grubfucker,' Strider," you say, modulating your voice to be even and serene. Your intuition screams at you that you need to stay in control here, or things will get extremely volatile. His fingers slip around yours, and you let him squeeze your hand. It's the only reason you can feel the fine tremor running through him, like a freshly plucked violin string held at too high a tension.

Moments pass. Finally, Dimitri raises his hands in defeat. "I can see when I'm not wanted," he says with a small, bitter chuckle. "Have a nice life, Rose." He slides off the stool, flips Dave the bird, and absconds from the establishment. Your fingers tighten around Dave's, but he makes no move to follow.

Sensing that the threat has not yet passed, you tilt your head to one side and lock eyes with him (it took you only a handful of days to learn how to do this even when he wears his shades). "What happened just now, Dave?"

His shoulders relax, and his fingers lace with yours. "Sorry. It's just... fuck, this is _our_ time, not some-random-fuckwad-off-the-street's." He takes a deep breath, and the thread of anxiety seems to mostly leave him. But not entirely. Another handful of breaths go by before he speaks again, so low that you almost don't catcheit. "And I sure as shit am not going to sit there and let J. Random Hot Topic Douchenozzle try to put the moves on you." His face remains stoic, but you know how upset he must be to have not steeped the admission in more sarcastic metaphor.

"It's all right," you inform him. "You have nothing to fear, I was merely engaging in a social experiment." After his bare (at least by Strider standards) honesty, you can't not repay him in kind. "However, it is not worth disrupting our time out together just because I have a sociological itch to scratch."

This appears to be the proper thing to say. He disentangles his fingers from yours and downs his drink; you follow suit. John and Jade are none the wiser for what has just occurred. As the night progresses, you realize that you may have more than one instance of genetic sexual attraction to study.

The distressing element is not that one of these instances may be your ectobiological twin's. It is not that one of these instances may, in fact, be your own. It is not even the fact that you are perfectly willing to toy with a stranger's emotions for the sake of satisfying your curiosity. No, the thing that you find most distressing is the fact that you consider all of these things, and _none of them disturb you_.

This is when you begin to think that you may, perhaps, not be as well-adjusted as you had once hoped.

*

Things are quiet for a while after that night, though it is some time before Strider requests another Saturday night out. The household routine doesn't change, even as summer comes to a close and autumn starts seeping in, though little things begin to grow in the cracks:

Every Tuesday, you and Jade abscond while the boys are playing video games and go down to a little coffee shop on the corner. They have open mic nights, and you take turns reading different things. You know that Jade doesn't actually care about writing or open mic nights in general, but she does it to encourage you to practice your craft. She never says it directly, but you can tell she enjoys listening to you read your latest chapter every week over a cloyingly sweet cappuccino. Sometimes you see her talking with the other patrons, and you're pleased to see that she's making such great strides with socializing herself (while a part of you aches that she would give her attention to anyone else). But she always ignores everyone else when you take the stage.

Saturday afternoons are always spent with John at the movie theater near your apartment. You always see at least one new release each week to satisfy John's craving for "fine cinema," though you tend to find John's choices to be uncultured. However, you are not going for the movies themselves, they are simply the pretext used to bond with your former friendleader. You once attempt to attend a midnight showing, but neither of you particularly care for the crowds. After that debacle, you both agree that matinees are the more reasonable option. Sometimes, particularly when John fails to do his research and you end up in a horror movie, you find your hand gripped tightly in both of his (and this makes it worth sitting through all of the things that you really don't care for).

Your Fridays typically belong to Strider, though unlike Jade and John, there is not a set activity you do. Sometimes you simply join him in his room while he lays down a track. To an outsider, you imagine it must seem like you may as well not be there at all, but you enjoy studying the graceful lines of his body while he works (and you can tell that he appreciates your eyes on him). Other times, you accompany him and his beaten Canon to the park or the square, where you spend the day pretending to be tourists while he surreptitiously takes photos. When he's gone through a few rolls of film, you help him turn his bathroom into a make-shift darkroom so he can develop them himself. Most of the shots have an extremely surreal quality, and many of them he declares "fucking garbage," but sometimes you see a few quick snapshots of yourself in profile. You're barely recognizable to your own eyes; you look almost serene (and you wonder if this is how your brother sees you).

The earliest hours of Monday mornings you take for yourself. It doesn't matter whether you all fell asleep on the couch after dinner or you all made it to your respective beds, when 3:00 AM comes, you slip away and head for the coat closet. Inside, you find the travel case containing a telescope you'd purchased shortly after securing your apartment, which you take reverently in both hands to your balcony. With practiced ease, you set up the telescope and aim it firmly skyward. The lights of the city are too bright to let you see much, but the simple act of looking at the night sky and finding it utterly devoid of tentacled eldritch horrors soothes your soul. Occasionally, you turn from the telescope to find Strider at your back looking worn and tired and holding two steaming mugs of coffee. When this happens, he sits next to you while you both sip at the brew (somehow he correctly divines that you take your coffee black with a teaspoon of sugar). He never asks what you're doing, but you suspect that he already knows.

These rituals, large and small, create the skeleton on which your life grows. It becomes comfortable. As summer ebbs away into autumn, you become complacent. It is your first mistake. Near the end of September, you have your first attack in your new home. In hindsight, you rationalize that you should have known better, but then, hindsight is always 20/20, as they say.

It happens on a Monday night. After dinner, you all watch a couple of episodes of _Squiddles_ that Jade had purchased on DVD. Nostalgia rolls over you as you watch, chased by unease; your interest in the show when you were younger seems foolish in the light of the intervening years. No one dozes off on the couch this time, and you silently accompany Jade to your room once the disc ends.

Learning to share a room with Jade was a challenge at first. It only took you a week of finding her curled up against your back like a puppy dog before you realized that two twin beds had been a miscalculation on your part. You had ordered a full-sized bedframe and mattress set soon after, and found that sleeping became much more comfortable.

Jade has since learned a bit more about the concept of personal space (you really can't fault her for not understanding it, though, given that much of her life had been spent being raised by an omnipotent dog), but you find it nearly impossible to refuse her requests to cuddle while you sleep. Often, the warmth of Jade's body pressed innocently against yours is enough to keep your nightmares at bay. You've grown accustomed to at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep every night, and you rarely feel the need to catch up during the times when the sun can burn away the touch of the horrorterrors.

Your bedtime ritual proceeds as normal: you and Jade crowd into the master bathroom to brush your teeth and Jade's hair before bed, then you turn back the covers so you can both slip under them. Jade waits for you to make yourself comfortable before tucking herself under one of your arms and pulling the covers back up over you both. As usual, she nods off first, and you are not too far behind.

The next time you wake up, you are standing, cold, and alone. It takes a few moments for your mind to arrange the disparate sensations into a cohesive picture of your surroundings. You are standing on the railing of your balcony. Your feet are bleeding. The door has been left wide open behind you. There are shards of glass and twisted metal scattered on the wood that comprises the floor of the balcony. You are wearing only your pajamas. In the back of your mind, you hear a stream of low, whispered words not quite loud enough to understand. In the noxious orange glow that suffuses the city at night, you can see tendrils of black smoke licking at your skin, unaffected by the wind. You know what this means, and you refuse to panic.

You hear a sound behind you, and slowly you turn. From the shadowed doorway, John's voice drifts toward you. "Rose? I heard a crash. Are you all right?"

 _"Be careful, I believe I have broken something,"_ you try to say, but something in your throat twists the sounds and renders them utterly unrecognizable. It's much more difficult to remain calm after that, but you try.

John takes a step forward, and you note with some relief that he is wearing hard-soled slippers. "Oh jeez, this isn't good." He uses his feet to scuff the worst of the debris out of the way and make a relatively clear spot before reaching up to you. "Come on, Rose, you're bleeding and it's freezing, we need to get you inside and make sure you don't need a doctor!"

The expression on his face is so earnest that you can't help but laugh at its ridiculous puppy-dog quality. The sound that emerges sounds less like laughter, though, and more like the grinding of a rusty hinge, which makes you wince. John doesn't seem to care. He puts his hands on your waist and picks you up as if you weigh nothing (it's easy to forget how much mangrit he truly has, you think). His hands feel almost blisteringly hot on your body, even with the flannel of your pajamas between them and your skin.

Still making it seem effortless, John carries you toward the bathroom, taking care to keep your bloodied feet from touching the carpet. It's a touch you appreciate, even though you're sure you can afford to lose the security deposit. _"I'm very sorry that you have to see this,"_ you try tell him. Even if the words are warped beyond recognition by the eldritch poison running through your veins, the tone of your voice remains the same. He just flashes a pained little smile and shakes his head.

"I don't know what you said, but I'm pretty sure you're being silly. We can clean up the mess later, we just have to take care of you now." He shifts his grip on you so that you're held up with only one hand, using the other to push back the shower curtain and turn on the water. Once he's satisfied by the water's temperature, he sets you gently on the edge of the tub. "Put your feet under the tap and rinse them. It'll be okay."

You comply, hissing when you feel the water touch your skin. It burns like acid, bubbling and boiling where it touches your blood and causing the mirror to fog over. What flows down the drain looks less like water and more like used motor oil. You cringe; the whispers rise in pitch, and you can pick out a few words such as "kill him," "kill them," "take it all for yourself." The detached, clinical portion of your mind sighs in relief. This particular Elder One is not the worst to be ridden by, and Its advice is generally easily ignored.

John notices the effect the running water has on you. "Okay, I'm sort of flying blind here, but would it help if I put you under the shower? Does water kind of help this go away?" Not wanting to hear eldritch speech coming from your mouth again, you simply nod. "Okay, we can do that!" He leans around you and twists the knob that turns on the shower head before wrapping his arms around your waist and hopping under the spray with you.

The effects are immediate and frightening, even though something like this had once been almost routine not that long ago. Everywhere the water touches feels like fire, and the whole bathroom fills with the billowing gray smoke that rolls off your skin in sheets. Two noises drown out all others: the hiss of the water as it turns to corrupted steam and a high-pitched keening that might be coming from your own chest. The bottom of the tub is filled with viscous black liquid streaked with red from where blood still runs from your feet.

Through all of this, John remains steadfast. He holds you up under the water with an unwavering grip, careful to make sure your feet never touch the distressing oil slick on the bottom of the tub. After a few moments, you realize that he's been muttering things into your hair this whole time. "It's okay, Rose, it's okay. I know it hurts, I really do, and I'm here for you. We're all here for you. Just stay with us. They can't hurt us anymore. You don't have to listen to what they say. It's okay."

Eventually the water runs clear, devoid even of the blood from your feet. "I'm all right, John," you say experimentally. Your throat feels raw (as it always does after it attempts to accommodate speech not meant for mortal vocal chords), but the words are English. Your clothes and his are absolutely soaked.

He slowly sinks to his knees, then sits down and stretches out such that he is lying in the bottom of the tub with you on top of him. Only now do you realize that he is shaking. "I think your telescope is broken." There's a note of uncertainty in his voice, like he's afraid the news will break you. You snort.

"It would not be the first item of some value that I've destroyed while being tormented by the shades of the horrorterrors." Somehow, you manage a small smile.

"We'll get you a new one." He offers the words like something meant to placate a volatile child.

"I'm not mad, John. Not at you." When he seems unconvinced, you add, "I'm fine."

You say those two words because you know John needs to hear them, but you aren't sure if they're the truth.


	4. Chapter 4

Your name is **JADE HARLEY** , and you're **PRETTY HAPPY** , all things considered. You love your new home, and you love your new family, and you feel like you're starting to get a handle on all the things you evidently missed out on by being raised on a secluded island by your grandfather and your omnipotent dog. (One of the things you evidently missed out on was the fact that most people don't actually believe you when you talk about your childhood.)

Living in a huge city like New York is probably the most amazing thing ever, especially because you have your best friends with you. You feel like you could spend years just walking around the city and climbing the buildings and never get bored... not that that's what you want to do! You're perfectly happy to go with the flow and follow your friends' leads. (Especially after that incident with the homeless man in the park... that was pretty embarrassing once Rose explained what was wrong!)

It's difficult to pin down your favorite part of your new living arrangements, although you've decided that you actually really like the snow (even if Dave gets super cranky at the cold). You particularly enjoy the fact that it's a reason to use all of the things Rose has made over the years: blankets, afghans, sweaters, scarves, shawls, mittens, muffs, balaclavas... you love them all, especially because you know Rose made them. It fills you with warm and fuzzy feelings every time you get to bundle yourself up in her handiwork. It's like wrapping yourself up with her.

Actually, no, that's your favorite part of your new living arrangements in the winter. You still struggle with what exactly constitutes a "personal bubble" sometimes (you came from a household where you got cuddles any time you felt like it), so the ability to just pull someone onto the couch and wrap a blanket around you both is pretty damn awesome. And then, sometimes, someone else will pass by and you can usually make puppy eyes at them until they make hot cocoa for all of you, and you all end up on the couch cuddling together under Rose's handmade blankets.

Well, all right, that's not _exactly_ your favorite part. Your _favorite_ part is when your initial subject is Dave. It's just more fun that way. At first he was so resistant to the idea, but now you can just tug on one of his sinewy wrists and he falls onto the couch like a sack of potatoes. You arrange his limbs for maximum comfort (because he's a silly ass and goes boneless as soon as you initiate contact), then you snuggle up with your arms around his waist and your head against his chest so you can listen to his heartbeat and breathing. He always tenses up at first, like he might try to run at the slightest sound, but after a few minutes under the afghan, he sort of melts into you and the sofa. Sometimes one arm will fall around your shoulders and he'll absently play with your hair, and it's pretty awesome.

What's not so awesome is how he reacts when, one day in late November, that you have a date (with that nice boy you've been chatting with at the coffee shop).

In a lot of ways, it's like the whole process in reverse. Dave stiffens underneath you, pulls himself away, leaves the sofa and you, and just walks away. He doesn't talk to you again for the rest of the day. It isn't hurtful, exactly, so much as it is confusing.

The next morning, Dave's awake when roll out of bed and stagger into the living room. He's got a mug of cocoa with a handful of marshmallows on top in one hand and an apologetic look on his face. "M'sorry," he says, and presses it toward you. You accept it and slide onto one of the stools in the breakfast nook next to him. As the post-slumber fog clears from your brain, you notice how kind of horrible he looks, face drawn and hair lank.

"Eh, I guess I can forgive you," you say, watching the tension drain from his expression. " _If_ you tell me what the hell that was about."

He winces. "It was just bad timing, Harley. Got a case of the vapours imagining you with some hipster douche going out on the town. I blame my hormones, 'cause I'm definitely PMSing. I could eat five gallons of ice cream and talk for hours about how I'm more bloated than a beached whale right now."

You giggle-snort and gently thump him upside the head. "Dave, that's gross. I don't wanna imagine you menstruating!"

"Yeah, no kidding. Don't think this house can withstand the force of _two_ Strider-Lalondes on the rag. It'd be a fucking nightmare. Paint the whole place black to reflect the darkness in our hearts or some shit." The mental image almost makes you snort your cocoa, but you manage not to through sheer pig-headedness.

"Okay, your talking privileges have been revoked, asshole," you tell him. "Anyway, don't worry! It's not like anything major is going to happen! It's just dinner and _maybe_ a movie. No coffee, though, since Dane kind of works around coffee all day."

He quirks an eyebrow, which is the closest you know he's going to come to any kind of actual facial expression at this point. "'Dane?' Seriously, Harley, you're going on a date with a dude named 'Dane?' That has to be one of the top ten douchiest names in the US. Lemme guess, he was a linebacker in high school and now he's a dickbag stand-up comedian with a face-punchability-rating of over 9000, am I right?"

"Dave, what did I say about your talking privileges?" There's no bite to your words, though; you're entirely too entertained by all his pseudo-cool posturing to actually be annoyed. It's never been hard for you to see right through it and tell what he's _really_ saying. "I'll be fine! It's just something nice and friendly! Having friends is a good thing. You should try it sometime."

Everything about his demeanor bristles, like he's a little porcupine or hedgehog. "I've got all the friends I need right here. 'Sides, I don't think the world can handle all the jealousy when it finds out there just isn't enough Strider to go around." Dave reaches out like he's about to ruffle your hair but develops a nasty case of hover-hand around your shoulder, as if he's suddenly afraid of casually touching you now. After a moment, his hand falls back to his side. "Whatever. You kids have fun. I'll be waiting up with the shotgun like a good lusus." And just like that, he absconds.

You're left with your cooling cocoa and a niggling feeling of dread.

*

Your date with Dane goes really well. With all the fussing Rose and John did (and Dave, in his own aloof, can't-admit-I-give-a-shit-but-I-actually-care-a-whole-fucking-lot way), you're genuinely surprised when it goes off without a hitch. He takes you to a pleasant Greek joint within walking distance of the coffee shop once his shift ends. You share gyros and souflaki and talk about the Large Hadron Collider because Dane's _almost_ as interested in particle physics as you are (and you used up all your polite small talk back at the coffee shop when he was working). Afterwards, you wander by the theater to see what's playing, but decide to just go to the park when it turns out that the only movie with a showtime even remotely soon is another _Smurfs_ sequel.

At the park, you and Dane talk about your dreams. He's a terribly smart guy: at the age of twenty-one, he's already working on his master's degree in nuclear physics. He loves the barista gig, he tells you, but he plans one day to work for CERN. You confess that your dreams of late are simple, and have all revolved around establishing your current home, but you add that there is a part of you, however small, that longs to research inter-dimensional communications.

Dane laughs and beeps your nose, but he does not press the matter.

Well after dark, he takes you back to your apartment. He's a perfect gentlman and walks next to you with your arm held gently in his. When you reach your door, you smile up at him and tell him you had a great time. He smiles back, places a small kiss upon your nose, follows it with another kiss on your lips. "Call me," he says, and his voice is light and a little breathless. You squeeze his hand as he walks away.

After a few moments of just standing in the hall and grinning like a loon, you slide your key in the locks one after the other and let yourself inside. The apartment is quiet and dim, the only source of illumination coming from the lone light over the stove. It's not much, but it's enough to let you make out the shape of Dave folded up on the sofa holding a mug of what can only be coffee. "Hey, Dave! You're up late!"

He snorts, but doesn't move. "Hadda make sure daddy's little girl made it home safe, didn't I?"

You giggle and glide over to him (or at least it feels like gliding because you're so giddy you may as well be walking on air). Your fingers muss up his immaculately combed hair, reveling in how soft and silky it is. "Well, here I am, safe and sound. It was exactly like I told you it would be: a friendly and fun dinner with a walk in the park dessert and a good-night kiss cherry on top."

Dave butts the crown of his head against your palm like a cat. "Good-night kiss cherries are not my concern here, Harley. Dane of Douche is after a totally different kind of cherry, if you know what I mean, and papa Strider does not intend to let him pick that innocent fruit." He opens his mouth as if to continue, but you curl the hand in his hair into a loose fist and thump him lightly.

"Shush, you. Nothing's going to happen that I don't want, and you definitely aren't my dad." When he opens his mouth again, you give him another warning thump. "Nope, talking privileges are still revoked. Don't make me go get a newspaper! Now you go to bed. It's way past _both_ of our bedtimes!"

Once you've seen him to his room, you change into your PJs, complete your pre-bed rituals, and slither under the covers until you're pressed up against Rose's side. One arm automatically curves around you, her hand coming to rest comfortably on your hip. As soon as you're settled, you fall asleep.

The next morning, you call Dane. He says he had a fantastic time and would like to do it again. You schedule a date for next Thursday.

Rose and John congratulate you. Dave doesn't say a word.

*

It happens on your fourth date.

Dane suggested you go Christmas shopping together ("Mall crowds are less miserable when you're with someone you like," he'd told you), so you find yourself sitting across from him at a cramped food court table chatting and sharing MSG-stuffed mall Chinese food. "So, I've been thinking about it, and I have to ask: what's the draw of inter-dimensional communications systems?" He pops another piece of honey-glazed chicken into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before adding, "I mean, that seems like an awfully specific field of study to just randomly have an interest in."

You laugh. "I know, right? Well, it's not really random." This is the moment. You've been talking with Dane on a regular basis practically since you moved to New York. He's nice. Talking with him is comfortable. You don't even think about your next words. "I really want to try to get in contact with some friends. My family, you know, John and Dave and Rose, we all were friends with these other kids, when we were younger. But we lost the ability to talk with them, and I'd like to get that back for us someday."

Confusion blossoms on Dane's face. His brows knit together, and he sets his fork down on the tray. "I'm... not sure I heard you correctly."

"Well, I have a few theories," you say, picking your words to be as plain as possible. You'd thought his interest in theoretical physics and his grounding in nuclear physics would make it easier for him to understand, but you see now that you were wrong. "Mostly it has to do with the number we did on paradox space, which severed the connection between our universes in all except the most tangential way. There's bound to be _some_ connection through the Farthest Ring, because Rose still has issues with the horrorterrors, but it's not enough to get a message through."

The more you talk, the worse his expression seems to grow. Finally, you cock your head to one side and lay your fork down as well. "What's wrong, Dane?"

"Jade, I have to ask you a question," he says, voice gone flat.

"Sure, I'm happy to explain anything. It'd be nice to get some feedback, actually!" You smile. Dane does not.

"Did you hear any of the things you just said? Do you honestly believe any of that?"

The questions are like a glass of cold water to the face. "What? Of course I do. That's what all evidence points to, or at least what I can tell without any specialized equipment or anything..."

He shakes his head. "That's not what I'm talking about, Jade, and you know it! You're sitting there trying to tell me that you had contact with beings from another dimension because of some construct you call paradox space, which somehow you and your so-called 'family' broke, and you're talking about horrorterrors like they're _actual creatures_ that have real effects on people!" His voice rises steadily in pitch as he speaks, until the last few syllables are just an incredulous whine. Color rises to his cheeks until his face is flushed and angry.

"Well... yeah, of course I am," you reply after a few moments. "It's the truth."

These are evidently not the right words.

Dane explodes. "You are _delusional_ , Jade! There's no such thing as paradox space, there's no such thing as horrorterrors, and while I'm sure there may be life across some trans-dimensional divide, I'm also pretty sure that little kids don't have the ability to talk to them!"

"Wow, rude!" You cross your arms over your chest and glare at him over your shared meal. "You don't see me calling you delusional over things I don't get about your past! And goodness knows there's plenty of stuff I could call you out on, buster!"

"You are not well," he says, outrage gone from his voice and replaced with surprise. "You need some serious help, especially if you think _I'm_ the one with a problem here."

"I don't need help! You're just being stubborn and not listening!"

He tilts his head down and makes shushing gestures with both hands. "Please try not to make a scene in public, Jade. You're ill. I should take you home, let your housemates know what's going on so they can make arrangements to get you some help." Before you can say anything else in response, he pushes his chair away from the table and starts gathering his shopping bags. "C'mon, let's go."

"No." Your arms remain firmly crossed and you continue glaring.

"Jade, please. Don't make a scene."

"I'm not making a scene," you snarl. "You're the one being rude and trying to tell me what did or didn't happen to me when you weren't even there! Until you've had to watch your friends die, until you've had to see your friends go grimdark, until you've had to say 'goodbye forever' to the people who helped you beat insurmountable odds just to get back to where you started... and even then, when you get home you find out that all that trouble you went to was almost for nothing because the person who loved you and took care of you is _still dead_... you don't get to tell me what did or didn't happen!"

You realize belatedly that you've started crying, but you refuse to care. Heaving a sigh, Dane sets his bags down and walks around the table to stand beside you. Then he rests one hand on your shoulder. "Jade..."

"No, I don't have to put up with this hoofbeast excrement," you say as you wipe at your face with the tail end of your scarf. "What happened actually _happened_! Rose was there, Dave was there, John was there... we all went through it together and it made us who we are, and as horrible as that was, no one can ever take that away from us! I-if we hadn't done what we had to do, you wouldn't even _exist_!" Your last words are punctuated with a pitiful sniffle that you can't quite hold in.

"Jade, you need help." Dane's tone is calm, almost soothing (if he'd been Karkat, you would suspect him of preparing for a righteous shoosh-papping), but you know better than to trust it. You shake off his "concerned" hand on your shoulder as you stand to gather your things.

"No, I need to go home."

"Jade, this isn't healthy." He tries to place his hand back on your shoulder, but you knock it away.

"Thanks for lunch," you tell him. Having gathered your belongings, you leave him standing alone in the food court.

*

By the time you manage to hail a cab and make it back to the apartment, it's nearly three in the afternoon. John and Rose are already gone by the time you stumble in, but Dave sits sprawled on the sofa with an Xbox controller in his hands. He isn't so involved in whatever "ironically shitty" game he's playing that he doesn't notice you walking in, though. "'Sup, Harley? Thought all the kids were gonna be out of the nest today. Am I gonna have to cancel my plans to dance around the house in my underwear while pretending I'm Tom Cruise?"

Then he looks up and sees the tear-tracks on your face and the way your bottom lip still trembles. The game controller is completely forgotten on the couch as he hops over the coffee table to stand in front of you. "Oh, shit. What happened, Harley? Whose world do I need to end?"

You shake your head. "Nobody needs to die... Dane's just a monumentally stupid fuckass who said some pretty hurtful things because he's stupid and doesn't know what he's talking about and you were right, he's kinda a douchenozzle." You're crying again by the time the words are done tumbling out of your mouth. You can't help it; you're just _so frustrated_ by the fact that someone (particularly someone who seemed as nice as Dane at first) would try to tell you that most of the defining moments of your life were delusions. You feel so angry and so helpless, and ultimately so _sad_ for all the things you lost that he tried to tell you hadn't existed in the first place at all.

Distantly, you are aware of Dave tugging your shopping bags gently from your hands and setting them aside. "Whoa, there, no need for Niagra fucking Falls," he says. Though the words on their own sound like they should be harsh, they aren't. "I know it's Christmas and you wanna make sure all the kids whose folks work at the fucking Kleenex factory get something under the tree this year, but seriously, cut it out. Ain't attractive."

"I don't care," you say, scrubbing at your face with the back of your sleeve. "I miss them, Dave. I miss everybody! I miss Bec and Grandpa and Kanaya and Karkat and Feferi and everyone else, even the creepy ones like Tavros and Eridan, even the other kids like my penpal! It sucked, god, _everything_ sucked, but I wish I could go back there if it meant I could see everyone again."

"Don't go down that road, Harley. That road is paved with bad ideas and dead Daves. Which I guess makes it a really fucking handsome road, and I can see why you're thinking about it. But shit..." Through your tears, you can see where his little cool facade is cracking and concern is starting to show. He holds it in the corners of his mouth and the space between his eyebrows. He shrugs helplessly. "Look at what you got now. If it helps, I'll be a culturally insensitive prick and go all sassy gay moirail on you. I mean, what we got going now is pretty fucking good, right?"

Tentatively, you reach out and find his hands. He doesn't seem to care that your fingertips are damp, instead eagerly winding his fingers with yours. "Do you ever think you're crazy? That what happened was all just made it up?" There's no way to fight the tremor in your voice, so you don't even try.

It's like your words break him. It's like he's a puppet and you took a sickle and sliced all his strings. His face shuts down, and his grip on your hands tightens. You feel like you might be looking at the shell of a Dave, an ex-Dave. You're worried that you're actually seeing the real Dave. You can feel his eyes on you through his ridiculous aviators, searching for something, when he finally speaks. "Every goddamn day, Jade. I think I am crazy every second out of every day, thought it since that fucked up game spat out a buncha corpses instead of people, thought it since I couldn't turn off feeling all the fucking stupid little moments slipping away from me. I been thinking I'm crazy for over five years, and the only thing that kept me going was knowing-- _knowing_ \-- that if I was crazy, so were you. And that makes it okay."

Suddenly, he pulls you into a tight hug, and you let him because it's _Dave_ , and he's warm, and Dave hugs are the best. You return the hug without reservation. He's still wearing his sleep-clothes (a voluminous gray hoodie, a t-shirt, and black sweatpants), but that doesn't stop you from feeling each rib beneath your arms or the way body heat always seems to roll off of him on hot waves.

Your hands are cold, so you slip them up under his shirt and press them into the skin of his lower back, just above his hip bones. The effect is immediate, with Dave squawking and trying to hop away. You just hold onto him and laugh. The confused, almost-hurt look on his face only makes it worse. "Jegus fuck, your hands are carved out of dry ice! I'm going to have frost-bite on my ass because of you! What do you have against my flawless Strider derriere?"

"I have nothing against your butt, Dave," you say, still giggling. "In fact, my ice-block hands have not touched your butt at all. Your claims of frost-butt are all lies!" A mischievous thought flits through your brain, and it's entirely too good to let go. You grin up at him. "Let's fix that!"

He doesn't quite seem to follow your train of thought, because you can see his brain literally _shut down_ when you slid your hands into the waistband of his sweatpants and grasp his buns firmly. You can't help but giggle again. "Wow, hey, yeah, this is a pretty flawless derriere, Dave!"

He swallows twice (you can tell by the way his Adam's apple bobs) and clears his throat once before he's able to make words again. "Harley."

"Yes, that's my name, Dave."

"Harley, your hands are on my ass." His Adam's apple bobs again. A light flush starts to creep across his cheeks.

"Yep! Thanks for telling me that, I don't know how I would've figured out where they went otherwise." You wiggle your fingers experimentally, as if you'd only just realized that they were attached to the ends of your arms. Dave's blush gets worse.

"All right, obviously Rose has been lax in her being-a-normal-human-being lessons, because your hands are still lovingly cupping my glutes here. Now, I'm not a teacher but I'll try to be as educational as possible." He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a huff that ruffles your bangs and tickles your forehead. "Most of the time, people not raised by wolves or dogs or First Guardians only touch the butt of someone they want to sleep with."

Purposely, you ignore his meaning and just smile sweetly at him with your best innocent look. "I sleep with you on the couch all the time, Dave! I'd probably do it in your bed, too, but it might make John feel weird, and Rose would get lonely. And your bed's kind of small."

"That's not what I meant!" Dave's entire face is red now. "Fucking Christ, are you going to make me explain it in a play-by-play? Don't touch someone's butt unless you wanna bump uglies. Do the horizontal shuffle. Make the beast with two backs. Score one in the tight end. Put tab A into slot B. C'mon, Harley, throw me a bone here, I don't want to stand here with your hands on my bare ass all night trying to come up with shitty metaphors until you figure it out and put 'em in your own pockets."

"Gross, why don't you just call it having sex, Dave?"

He shrugs, just a quick jerk of his shoulders. "Figured the shitty metaphors would get it across faster. You gonna unhand my person now?"

You pretend to consider it for a moment, humming thoughtfully. Through all of this, he's simply stood there and made no real move to get away. He hasn't even really broken the initial embrace, though it's certainly not as tight as it started out. All of his statements have centered on your awareness of what illicit butt-touching means. He has asked if you plan to remove your hands. He has carefully avoided telling you to.

You reach a conclusion.

Your hands don't move.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a couple of things to mention here. The first is that this chapter gets some strong warnings for alcohol use by underage individuals that drifts perilously close to alcohol abuse. It also gets strong warnings for two individuals engaging in sexual activity while under the influence of alcohol.
> 
> The game that the kids play is a real game, and it's immensely entertaining. I played it once, and it was pretty accurately described as being like Apples to Apples for terrible people. (ETA BECAUSE DORA WASN'T THINKING ABOUT IT: If you click on the CAH link and download the PDFs of the cards, there are definitely some cards that might be triggering. When I played it, most of those cards had been tossed out in favor of the 'make your own' variety, so fair warning.)
> 
> This chapter hasn't really been beta'd but I've been staring at it for so long, I just wanted to get it out of my hair.

Your name is **DAVE STRIDER** , and **EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHIT**. More to the point, **EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH TURNS TO DUST** , and you are **LITERALLY THE MOST WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT ON THE PLANET**. You have just crossed a line, and you don't know what the fuck to do anymore ( ~~like you ever did~~ ). No, that's a lie. You know exactly what to do, and you feel like the worst human being ever for it.

It starts about a week and a half before Christmas, with Jade's cold paws on your hot ass. It's awkward at first because you can never fucking tell if she actually _gets_ the implications of what she's doing, but she makes it pretty clear what her intentions toward your butt are. ~~You delude yourself into thinking that you're more than okay with this.~~

After that, Jade seems more openly affectionate with everyone, though you're not sure how she manages that since she was already a pretty demonstrative kind of girl. In fact, you're pretty sure that her picture is next to the term "cuddle-slut" on urbandictionary.com. But, somehow, she manages to step up her game. There's hardly a moment that goes by when she's not engaged in some sort of EXTREME casual touching: any time John is within arm's reach, she drapes herself across him; Rose's lap has become her favorite combination pillow-slash-desk.

And then there's you.

It's like she all of the sudden thinks you are the most fascinating fucking specimen on the planet. In the days leading up to December 25th, she becomes this freakish ninja master at sneaking her hands into the back pockets of your jeans. It's almost like she's training for the secret casual ass-grab Olympics, starring one Dave Strider's hunk rump. And may all the gods help you if she catches you wearing pants _without_ back pockets, because then her clammy little hands just go straight for the kill. ~~It's almost enough to make you consider wearing boxers or something, but fuck that noise.~~

You make the appropriate frustrated noises, but not-so-deep down, you're pretty chill with these new arrangements. Jade knows this. You know Jade knows this. You're both pretty chill with that knowledge, too. Fuck, what red-blooded ( ~~only slightly bi~~ ) guy wouldn't be thrilled to have someone as cute and adorkable and actually pretty attractive as Jade all over his business? Only ones incapable of popping boners, you're sure, and god knows you're not one of them.

On the night of Christmas Eve, after you'd successfully spiked the egg nog with some cheap rum, and Rose and John had collapsed on the couch together in a fit of giggles over _National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation_ , Jade grabs a fistful of your hoodie and drags you to the door to the balcony.

John had _insisted_ that the apartment be decorated for the holiday season, at which point Rose had engaged her passive-aggressive flighty broad tendencies and turned the apartment into a fucking winter wonderland. This included strings of lights and garlands around all the doorjambs, table runners with snowman patterns on them, a gigantic tree in one corner tarted up with so much tinsel that you could barely see the needles, and several sprigs of mistletoe hung in weird places. This includes, but is not limited to, over the tub in the bathroom you share with John (which he refuses to explain or take down), over the refrigerator, somewhere in Rose and Jade's room (or so you assume, since you've caught Jade pecking your sister on the cheek whenever they're standing in the doorframe), and over the door to the balcony.

You stand facing Jade for a few moments, one of her hands bunched up in the hoodie you sleep in, the other settling on your hip like a tiny little bird. You're taller than she is by a good few inches, so she has to tilt her head up to try staring you in the eyes. Her face is a little flushed, probably from the three cups of egg nog you saw her drink, and she has this adorable determined expression where her eyebrows come together and her bottom lip is just a little poutier than normal. A few strands of hair fall into her eyes. Without even thinking about it, you reach up and brush them aside.

Finally, she says, "Dave."

"Harley."

Evidently that's the wrong thing to say, because her face just looks even more determined, and she uses her grasp on your hoodie to pull you down so you're closer to eye level with her. "Dave, there is mistletoe here. It's Christmas. We're standing under it together. You are legally obligated to let me kiss you."

"Fuck the police," you say, but she doesn't listen. She jerks you down the rest of the way until your lips are mashed inelegantly against hers in a sloppy, kind of tipsy liplock. Her glasses click against yours, her breath is warm on your cheek, and she tastes like the egg nog you've both been drinking. When you finally break the kiss, you're both breathing a little heavy and you're sure your lips are bruised. "Welp. That happened." ~~Your voice is a little more shaky than you care to admit.~~

"Still under the mistletoe."

You glance up, an exaggerated gesture to buy yourself a little time while you figure out what to do. "Yup. Still a thing that's happening."

She glares up at you impatiently. One hand's still in your hoodie, the other is still on your hip. Your fingertips still brush her forehead, even though the hair is back in its place.

This time, you bend down of your own accord. You're less tipsy than she is ~~because you've had more experience at the whole being drunk thing~~ , so you aren't just smashing your lips together. This is a real kiss, one ~~of the three~~ you've been saving for a special occasion. It starts out slow and sweet, but it doesn't stay that way for long. You may have taken the initiative this time, but Jade makes it pretty fucking clear that she's the one in charge by sucking your bottom lip into her mouth and applying just a little bit of pressure with those ridiculously ~~adorable~~ dorky teeth of hers and fuck your knees are not wobbling in the slightest nope no sir not happening.

Jade pulls back, giving your lip one last tug that definitely does _not_ leave you panting in the slightest. Then she leads you back to the couch, flops down, and pulls you down on top of her. "Merry Christmas," she mumbles into your shoulder.

"Merry Christmas," you reply.

*

After that, Harley decides that it's open season on your tonsils. The week between Christmas Day and New Year's is spent in a pretty bizarre haze of random Jade-initiated makeouts that leave you gasping and your dignity in shreds. During this time, you learn a lot of really interesting facts.

Fact one: Jade is pushy. What Jade Harley wants, Jade Harley gets, and she gets it with vigor. You discover this fact the first time she catches you in the kitchen by yourself and pushes you up against the counter. There is no liquor to blame this time; it's just you, her, your hands on her hips, her hands on your ass, and a barrage of kisses like a tactical nuclear strike. When she was buzzed, she was sloppy. Sober, it's like kissing a lightning rod. She's firm and unyielding, and the mere act of getting your lips close sends an electric jolt up your spine.

Fact two: Jade is methodical. She never comes at you the same way twice. She's always changing up her plan of attack, testing your limits and seeing what works and what doesn't. There are moments, especially when you see her whispering on the sofa with Rose and stealing furtive glances your way, when you think that she's devised an entire scientific method for exploiting your weaknesses. It's like she's trying to glitch out your Strider game. ( ~~She is almost distressingly good at it.~~ )

Fact three: Jade likes it rough. This one sort of ties in with finding out that she's pushy, but you realize it deserves its own entry in the sylladex of your memory after she literally _bites you_. There's this really surreal moment where all you can think of is the one time you tried to make out with Terezi, but Jade's all curves and blunt edges in all the places that your crazy troll brorail was sharp and jagged. Instead of leaving you with a couple of lines of scars on your back and a half-moon on your shoulder that looks like a tiny shark-bite, Jade gives you five hickeys on your neck, one on the inside of your right elbow, and two on your hip-bone. The last ones leave you breathless and shaking on your bed, and you have to go forcibly remove Egbert from the bathroom so you can take a long, cold shower.

Fact four: Rose is in cahoots with Jade. You shouldn't be surprised by this one, since they've been sharing a bedroom (and a bed ~~though you don't know how far that goes~~ ) since you all moved in. There isn't any direct evidence, exactly, but you're able to infer it from the way Jade will sometimes give Rose a Significant Look, at which point Rose will suddenly feel the need to take John out for ice cream (or whatever it is they do). This, by necessity, leads to the next fact you discover.

Fact five: John has no idea that his sister is feeling you up (with bonus corollary of "and no one else wants him to know"). As it turns out, the quickest way to get Jade off you is to invite Egbert into the room. Not that you particularly want that, but it's good information to have in case LOHAC freezes over and you decide you don't want her in your business. Still, you feel a little bad about it. Egbert's your best friend, and keeping him out of the loop like this... it feels wrong. Really wrong. But Jade obviously wants to keep it on the down-low, and you've already established how Jade Harley gets what she wants.

Then, New Year's Eve happens, and you realize that, for all the "facts" you think you know, you don't actually know shit.

*

Two days before New Year's Eve, you manage to score a veritable rainbow of half-decent schnapps which you squirrel away under your bed unbeknownst to everyone until the big night. The day before, you follow Egbert to the corner store for a pre-emptive snack run. Rose had declared that you would be going nowhere for the evening, just enjoying a quiet night in while watching the ball drop on your huge-ass TV, which suits you just fine. While Egbert goes for the snacks, you make sure to stock up on all of the mixers. You plan to ring in the New Year hammered into next week and dragging your other housemates with you.

New Year's Eve comes, and the evening starts sedately enough. Rose has taken control of the festivities (as usual), so there are neatly-arranged snack plates laid out on the coffee table and one of the sideboards has a few noisemakers and sparklers on it, presumably for use on the balcony after midnight. She's got the TV tuned to a local channel which has been running inane bullshit about the New Year's preparations all day, but the volume is low enough to be easily ignored. As the evening turns into night, John and Jade try to rope you and Rose into a game of [Cards Against Humanity](http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/).

"I'll play on one condition," you say, consulting your inner clock. The sky is already dark; it's definitely not too early to break out your multi-colored schnapps parade. Before either of them can ask what it is, you've already ducked into your room and gathered your party supplies.

"Uh, I hope the condition isn't that we have to drink all that," says John, his eyes so wide you're afraid they'll fall out.

You arrange your schnapps rainbow and mixers next to the coffee table and shake your head. "Nah." Before Egbert gets the chance to look too relieved, you continue, "We just take a shot each round we lose."

"Challenge accepted!" says Jade, shuffling the cards. She turns to Rose, turning on those puppy-dog eyes you all know so well. "Play with us!"

All eyes in the apartment turn to Rose as she mulls over Jade's invitation. Most of the time, your ecto-sibling is the most inscrutable person you know ( ~~because you know so many people, right~~ ), but tonight you can see most of her thoughts on her face as she mulls it over. Finally, she removes the frilly apron you'd tied around her waist, smooths her sweater, pulls four scotch glasses from the sideboard, and kneels beside the coffee table. "Faced with such an earnest request and the probability of thoroughly trouncing my brother, how can I resist?"

Jade grins and starts dealing the white cards. "Dibs on first Card Czar," she says before you can even open your mouth. Once the white cards are out, she plays the first black card: "During Picasso's often-overlooked Brown Period, he produced hundreds of paintings of ________."

You sift through your ten white cards, largely disappointed with the hand Jade dealt you. You judiciously remove the "multiple stab wounds" card from your hand and lay it face down on the table in front of you. You're not going to play that card any time soon, if at all. Eventually, you settle on playing "Harry Potter erotica," which you lay face down in front of Jade.

Once Rose and John play their choices, Jade closes her eyes, shuffles them, and reads them aloud. "All right, first up: during Picasso's Brown Period, he produced paintings of... Harry Potter erotica!" She glanced at Rose, giggling. "This was you, wasn't it?"

"I'm positive that I don't know what you're implying, Jade," Rose says, her face totally impassive. You meet her eyes across the table, and she lifts one eyebrow in response. Something deep inside you has this stupidly fierce urge to start grinning like an idiot, but you resist.

Harley shakes her head and continues. "Next: during Picasso's Brown period he produced hundreds of paintings of... whaaaat, this doesn't even make sense! How do you produce hundreds of paintings of an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist?" She pulls a face and you try not to notice how crestfallen John looks. Poor guy thought that was genuinely funny. You pat him on the knee but don't say anything.

"And finally, during Picasso's blah blah blah, he produced hundreds of paintings of... anal beads? Haha, ew, gross! Dave, why would you make me read that?" She tries to keep a straight face but can't manage it and she bursts out laughing. "All right, sorry, 'anal beads' takes this one!"

When Rose takes the black card to denote her point, John and Jade both stare. "That was _you_?" John asks, as if she'd just admitted to being Spiderman or something equally ridiculous.

"Strider hardly has the market cornered on depravity," Rose says. She passes a scotch glass to John and one to you. "I believe both of you boys require shots?" In this moment, you realize what a horrible mistake you have made, because now you know that your sister is playing you. She is playing you like a shitty old fiddle that's missing two strings and needs to be tuned, and you have no fucking clue what her angle is.

You pour Egbert a shot of peach schnapps and cut it with some Sprite because you know he's kind of a pansy and can't take his liquor straight. Then you pour yourself a double of peppermint because you have this sudden vicious desire to spend the night shit-faced and no real drive to fight it. You pick the peppermint because it burns on your tongue and burns on the way down, but you don't let on. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Egbert making faces while he struggles with his drink.

"Ugh, bluh!"

"Just chug it, bro, and chase it with some Sprite," you tell him, offering the two-liter bottle.

"I believe that I am Card Czar next, if we are going clock-wise," Rose says. She deals you and John a white card each, then draws the next black card: "I drink to forget ________." A part of you wonders if maybe she isn't trying to get revenge for the apron, particularly when she gives you that knowingly-quirked-eyebrow look. You eye your shitty hand and resign yourself to getting your ass handed to you.

You've never played Cards Against Humanity with Rose, and you quickly figure out why: she's scary good at it. She can weaponize her snarky wit using whatever cards she happens to have handy, and by the end of the game you've only poured her four shots. Because you aren't heartless (and you don't feel like holding anyone's hair while they worship the porcelain throne), you take pity on Egbert and Harley by only pouring them half-shots when they lose. You keep pouring yourself doubles all night ~~because you kind of hate yourself~~ , though, and you've come perilously close to putting that bottle of Rumple Minze out of its misery.

By the time it's over, your internal clock is all kinds of fuzzy but the TV says that it's almost next year. Your vision swims when you try to track your sister as she rises, gathers the noisemakers and sparklers, and passes them out. When her fingers brush yours, you find that you really don't give a shit about much of anything right now, and you tug her down until she's sitting half in your lap and half in John's. Something about the situation seems to strike Jade as extremely funny, because you suddenly find her giggling on your other side, batting at one of Rose's earrings like a cat.

Your brain is an extremely disjointed place to be, pickled in spirits ~~and ghosts from the past~~ as it is. You're keenly aware of the warmth that is John shifting to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you, the delicate aroma of lavender and sage that makes up your sister's scent, the sound of Jade's simple delight. Your head swims and your heart is filled with such immense _wanting_ : a yearning so strong that it punches you in the nuts, slices open your gut, and picks at your entrails like a bunch of starving crows ( ~~and you know what all of those feel like, you remember everything that happened to all your doomed selves, don't you~~ ).

You sling one arm lazily across John's shoulders, the other across Jade's, and you pull them close. You bury your face in ~~your sister's~~ Rose's sweater. You want to believe that you can stay like this forever. You want to believe that no one can take this away from you. You want to believe that if you want it hard enough, it will just be the four of you against the world, and you'll win.

Distantly, you hear the TV counting down. The ball drops. It's next year. You wave your noisemakers. Rose twists in your lap ~~and your heart leaps into your throat~~ and pulls John into a kiss ~~and god you are a sick fuck she is your sister why did you think she was going for you and not Egbert~~. After sitting for a moment in stunned silence, John's arms come up to pull Rose fully into his lap as he returns the kiss ~~and Jegus fuck why does this hurt so much it's not like he hasn't had a thing for Lalonde forever just get the fuck over this come on get up and go to bed and sleep this shitty holiday off~~.

You try to push yourself to your feet, but the world feels like it's cocked at a 45 degree angle and you stumble, right yourself, and stumble again. Before your face can bump uglies with the carpet, Harley's there with her hands on your chest pulling you up. Her face is like sunshine and sweeping cirrus clouds on a cool autumn day, and your heart aches in your chest. "Come on, you're trying to make it to your bed, right?" she asks. Her voice is warm like molasses in your ears, her words are like shiny stars. You nod, staring at her and feeling naked. You don't know what to think anymore.

She ducks under your arm with a soft 'oof' as she takes your ~~dead~~ weight and drags you back to your room. She tosses you down onto the bottom bunk like it's nothing, which makes a little sense since she's related to Egbert and probably has some ladyvim up her sleeve to match his mangrit. "You gonna be okay, numbnuts?" she asks, smile wide and unconcerned. ~~When she says it like that, it's almost like you're just shit-faced because you're dumb and not because you're a monumental idiot who's all torn up inside.~~ The cool, collected parts of your brain got shut down hours ago, so you can only smile stupidly up at her.

You're only vaguely aware of your mouth moving when you respond in all honesty, "You're beautiful," as if it has anything to do with the conversation Jade is trying to have. It makes her smile, though, so that's something.

"You're drunk, Dave."

"Yeah, I'm a drunk Dave. Way better than a dead Dave. You're still beautiful." You mean it. You are being so sincere that your back teeth hurt. You hope with all your heart that she can see it.

She shifts you over on your bed. Thin fingers pull your shades off and rest them on your endtable. Her goofy round specs join them. She sits down next to you, leans over, and presses her forehead into yours. Your whole world becomes feeling her breath on your face and looking up into eyes that are green and luminous in the same way absinthe is green and luminous because they are intoxicating. You could drown here in this bed with her looking at you like this and you think you'd be okay with it. It isn't what you want, but you think maybe it's close enough that you can be happy with that ~~and as long as you know, _know_ , that John and Rose and Jade are getting something they want out of the deal, that's okay you're okay it'll be okay it's just a silly wanting anyway and it's not worth fucking up all this for it's the best you've ever had it's better than you deserve~~.

You move so you're actually lying on the bed (even though your feet are on your pillow and your head's at the foot), and you pull Jade with you. She's straddling you now, knees on either side of your hips, forehead still resting on yours. You cup her face in both of your hands. You're sorry that they're rough, sorry for the scars and scrapes and callouses, sorry for the broken fingernails and the cracked knuckles. They look so wrong against her brown skin, but it doesn't stop you.

You kiss her. You kiss her slowly, tenderly, gently because she's beautiful and you don't want to do anything that could possibly hurt her. You went through most of the game thinking she was breakable like glass, and you know that's wrong now, you know she's made of steel and starstuff and glowing uranium that could power a billion green suns, but you can't help but think that you might be the one sharp thing that she manages to slice herself on.

One kiss becomes two, becomes three. You kiss her cheeks, her chin, her eyelids, her forehead, then reach down, lace your fingers with hers, and start leaving kisses on her knuckles. Your other hand rests in the small of her back. At some point the words "love you" slip out of your mouth, and you don't have the willpower to reel them back.

The rest of the night is burned into your memory in a series of snapshots like bad Polaroids, tossed on the floor and picked back up jumbled together. Jade has her fingers in your hair and is pulling your head to one side so she can lick your neck while you writhe helplessly underneath her. You've somehow managed to divest both Jade and yourself of your respective shirts, and you're amazed at how perky her tits actually are as you hold them in your hands. You're kissing her, taking your time, exploring every inch of her with your lips. You're both wearing your shirts again, but Jade's trying to get yours off of you so she can dig her nails into the flesh of your back. Somehow you've switched positions and you're straddling her, your teeth are clamped down on her neck and you're sliding inside her ~~"Jesus fuck Harley this ain't gonna last long" "Just shut up and do it dumbass"~~ and you can feel hot lines of pleasure-pain down your sides where she's dug into you.

*

You wake up the next morning with a splitting headache. It's 7:58 AM, January 1st. You don't hear the sound of Egbert breathing. You're sitting, naked, next to Jade Harley (who is also naked and curled up in the corner of your bed). She looks like a hot mess with bruises and bite marks you don't remember.

That's when it sinks in.

You fucked her. She was drunk and you took advantage of that to fuck her.

You are scum.


	6. Chapter 6

You leave while the new year is still pretty new. Everyone's asleep. None of your friends can hold their liquor, and for that you're suddenly thankful. You'd rather throw yourself onto a hundred shitty swords (and you know how that feels, don't you?) than face any of your friends right now.

For a moment, it's like you're back in high school. The number of times you absconded while no one was looking was positively shameful. You don't leave a note; that's never been your style. You don't lock the door behind you, either, because you make a point of leaving your keys.

It was the best almost-year of your life. You're not surprised you fucked it all away.


	7. Chapter 7

Your name is **JOHN EGBERT** , and you are standing outside of a **SHITTY, RAT-INFESTED MOTEL** in **NEW JERSEY** in mid-January. The slate-gray clouds overhead have started spitting out sticky-fat snowflakes that cling to the scarf and hat Rose gifted you at Christmas. Before you'd left, the weather man had been predicting clear skies and unseasonably warm temperatures. But you'd known better. You might not be in the game anymore, but you can still hear the wind. That's why you packed your overnight bag in anticipation of snow.

You hadn't known what else to anticipate, though, so you just sort of winged it. You'd just had the address Rose had given you of the ATM Dave had used his card at and a grainy CCTV picture of someone who might've been your best bro outside a shady-looking liquor shop. It hadn't even occurred to you to question where Jade had gotten the screencap. From there, it hadn't been difficult to suss out where Dave was likely to be staying.

Which brings you back to the shitty motel in New Jersey. It looks like every dive motel stereotype in the history of ever, complete with crumbling stucco accents and a guy out back who looks like a pimp-cum-drug-dealer. It is pretty much exactly the sort of place you can see Dave using as a hideout. "Ironically," of course.

Except this isn't ironic, is it? Dave had meant to disappear. It'd been almost two weeks before he'd slipped up and pulled cash out of his account, most likely (or so Rose said) because he figured no one would be looking for him by now. Why he had chosen to stick around in New Jersey instead of making a break for somewhere further south, neither you nor Rose could figure.

He'd checked in under an assumed name (Jeffrey Heller, ha-fucking-ha), which you kind of expected so you asked for the tall guy with douchey hair and shades permanently affixed to his dumb douchey face. You _might_ have used some stronger words than that, but who can blame you? He had just disappeared, no note, nothing!

Before you can actually knock on the motel room door, it swings open.

You realize that for all the time you've been sharing a room with Dave, you have rarely (if ever) seen him without his shirt on, but here he is. Knowing intellectually that he'd been shot, stabbed, sliced, diced, vaporized, and god-only-knows-what else is one thing, but his chest and abdomen are like a roadmap for the "gruesome ways to die" section of a Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not museum. It's startling to see him standing there in the darkened doorway, all long limbs and pale skin and skinny jeans slung low on his hips. A cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth, half smoked and smouldering despite the no smoking sign on the door.

For a moment, you stare at each other and don't say a word. Evidently he has the heat in the motel room cranked, because you can feel warm air rushing out toward you and see goosebumps starting to prickle up on his skin. You'd been writing a list of things in your head that you'd say to him when you finally found him ("You made Jade cry!" "Rose didn't speak English for _six days_!" "I was _so worried_!") but it all just sort of disappears when the cigarette takes a nose-dive out of his mouth and Dave tries to snatch it out of the air and ends up grabbing the cherry and hissing like really cantankerous snake. He lets it drop and stamps it out while shaking his burned hand. "Jesus fuck!"

You can't help it. You laugh at him. He glares at you through his shades (you can tell because of the way his eyebrows draw together; it's a dead giveaway). Belatedly, you clamp a hand over your mouth because laughing at Dave when he burns himself isn't exactly conducive to convincing him to _come the fuck back home _.__

__He's still glaring by the time you've got a handle on the sniggering. "What do you want." The words are flat, with none of the inflection you associate with Dave's voice normally. It's like a slap in the face, but you manage not to recoil._ _

__"I want to talk," you say at length. "About why you ran away and when you're coming home."_ _

__He looks at you like you've grown two heads, but he steps aside to let you into the motel room. "Sure, whatever."_ _

__The interior is exactly as shitty as the exterior leads you to believe: the carpeting may have been an attractive beige shag back in the 70s, but it is mostly bald and stained brown now; the furniture is rickety and plastic and includes one moldy white lawn chair; and the less said about the bed, the better. It reeks of cheap tobacco (Dad would be proud to know that you know the difference, you think with a pang) and even cheaper whisky. Empty bottles litter the floor and there is at least one bag of Chinese take-out of indeterminate age on the grimy card table that serves as a desk in the corner. You must be grimacing pretty hard, because Dave's face hardens even more._ _

__"Thought you said you were here to plead to my worse nature and come back with you, not judge my bachelor lifestyle," he says through an unreadable tight-lipped expression._ _

__"What the hell, Dave?" you demand, flabbergasted. All the stress and worry of the past several days comes bubbling up your throat and you are in no mood to stop it. "This isn't just some stupid 'ironic' stunt or a dumb 'ironic lifestyle,'" you emphasize your disgust for the words with air-quotes, "this is... I don't even know what this is! It's like you're this dumb animal that crawled off to the crappiest hole he could find to kill himself slowly! And then gets all butt-hurt when the people who care about him decide to find out what's going on because, oh, I don't know, maybe we love you and want you around?" You take a deep breath. "What the hell is wrong with you? Did you think we wouldn't notice that you were gone? That you don't mean anything to us?"_ _

__You're good and angry. It's a righteous sort of anger in a way, because you know you're right. You know for a fact that Rose and Jade (and you) love Dave a lot, and if Dave thinks otherwise he is _totally wrong_. Your position is completely unassailable. Your ship is unsinkable._ _

__Of course, you don't expect that to matter to Dave. He's always been the kind of guy to fight even when he knows he doesn't have two legs to stand on, and nothing's going to change that. You're ready for it. Sometimes the only way he ever learns is by getting some sense beat into him, and it just so happens that you're the best at hammerkind there ever was._ _

__Except Dave isn't responding like he normally would. He's just standing there, fists clenched at his side. "What are you playing, Egbert."_ _

__That stings. "I'm not playing at anything!" you cry. "I want to know what the hell you think you're doing staying in a roach motel trying to underage-drink and smoke yourself stupid instead of helping Jade and Rose take down all of the Christmas stuff!" Okay, maybe that's a really weak incentive but it is the first thing your floundering brain can come up with._ _

__With the way he stumbles back a little and sits down hard on the bed, you wonder if you somehow punched him in the junk instead of making a dumb argument for him to come back. "What the fuck?" he asks with emotion finally creeping back into his words. "Why would you fucking lie to me like that, bro? Jade ain't gonna want anything to do with me. Just let an asshole self-destruct in peace. You're better off without me."_ _

__You feel like he just dunked you in ice-water. How are you supposed to react when your best bro tells you he honestly thinks you're better off without him and that he's actively trying to throw himself at rock bottom? You'd been prepared to deal with him throwing a shit-fit. Not this._ _

__After a few moments, you take off your scarf and your hat and your jacket. You hang them gingerly over the back of the least-grody-looking chair in the room, then shuffle over to the bed and sit down next to Dave. You lean over just a little to bump his shoulder with yours. "I'm not leaving here without you, dude. Whatever's got you thinking that we're better off without you... you're wrong."_ _

__He doesn't say anything. He just slumps backward and curls up on his side, facing away from you._ _

__You're glad you remembered to pack your toothbrush; you just hope the tap in the bathroom dispenses something resembling water._ _

__*_ _

__Sitting in silence while Dave is doing the pillbug thing on the bed is pretty awkward, so you decide to use your time wisely: you go grab your things from the car (Rose had insisted you drive yourself rather than take a cab), you clean up some of the mess and confine it to one corner of the room, and you discover that the TV _actually works_ and receives decent basic cable. You make sure the toilet and sink work, though the shower makes some really horrific noises and fails to provide water._ _

__Dave finally moves after a couple of hours, picking up a half-crumpled pack of Pall Malls and lighting one up. He doesn't speak. It's spooky to see him so quiet._ _

__Getting tired of not talking to anyone, you pull out your phone._ _

__ EB: rose, are you there?  
TT: Yes. What is it, John?  
EB: it's dave. i found him but he won't talk to me. he said stuff about jade hating him and i should just let him self-destruct. it's kind of scary and i don't know what to do... :(  
TT: Well, it would seem obvious that allowing him to self-destruct is not an option. But you may have better luck with that if you were to find out why he wants to do it.  
TT: I'll ask Jade if she can shed any light on the situation but in the meantime, just try to keep Dave from doing something truly idiotic before he opens up.  
TT: This IS my brother. Given an audience, he's bound to start talking sooner or later. I'd bet money on it.  
EB: you don't sound worried at all.  
TT: I'm worried, to be sure, but what good does it do either of us for me to panic when you came to me for help?  
TT: Besides, if I didn't think you could bring him home in one piece, I would have gone myself.  
EB: seer's hunch?  
TT: Perhaps. Now put your phone down and try to figure out what's going on.  
EB: you and your weird unreliable insights.  
TT: That's not a "weird unreliable insight," it's common sense. How can you pay attention to Dave if you are focused on your mobile phone? _ _

__Ugh. She has a point. But you don't feel like telling her that, so you lock your phone's screen and drop it on the card table. Dave has finished his cigarette and is lighting another with the last embers of his first. "Don't you think one's enough?" you ask. Maybe if you can get a rise out of him, he'll open up._ _

__He glances over at you and his face is unreadable. His shades have slipped down his nose a little, enough that you can see that his eyes aren't really focused on you. "No," he says. He takes a drag and blows the smoke out through his nostrils._ _

__You know the effect is meant to be cool, but he completely wrecks it by dissolving into a strangled, choking cough. In between hacks, he stubs the cigarette out on the rusty metal bedframe. "Maybe," he wheezes._ _

__Tentatively, you reach out and rest your hand on his shoulder. His skin is almost unnaturally warm; if you didn't know better, you'd think he were running a horrible fever. He fails to pull away from you, so you let your hand slide over just a little so your fingers can curl around the back of his neck. It's been a while since he's gotten his hair cut, so the very tips of it tickle your knuckles._ _

__The two of you stay like that for what seems like forever, but is probably more like five minutes. That seems to be all Dave can stand of being next to you because he shakes off your hand as he gets to his feet. "Goin' to take a shower." You don't ask how he plans to do that when the tub doesn't work. You just let him slink off into the wasteland this establishment tries to pass off as a bathroom._ _

__Channel-surfing yields very little entertainment because the pipes start doing that death-rattle thing, and it drowns out most of what's going on. Evidently Dave managed to figure out how to bully the tap into doing its job during the time he's spent here. You briefly consider flopping down on the bed, but immediately toss the idea since you have two eyes and have seen the Dateline specials on motel-hooker-homicides. If only there were a way for you to convince Dave to go somewhere less shitty with you until he decides to finally agree to come home._ _

__You stop trying to watch TV and scratch the back of your head. That's... actually not a bad idea. The more you think about it, the better you feel about your budding plan: he obviously doesn't want to go home, and you don't want to stay here. It's a perfect compromise!_ _

__It doesn't take you long to get everything of yours and Dave's together and loaded into the car. Thankfully, epically long showers run in the Strider family, so you don't have to worry about him trying to stop you until after you're ready to leave. As an afterthought, you head to the office and give the attendant a fifty and let him know that "Jeffrey" will be leaving. He barely glances at you from under the brim of his baseball cap._ _

__Dave spends another half hour in the shower after you get done checking him out and loading up. It's still early enough in the afternoon that you can find a soap opera on one of the local channels and ad-lib your own dialog to keep yourself entertained. He steps out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and another thrown over his head just as Carlita is confessing to Alejandro that she slept with an alien ghost. You're a little disappointed you won't see how _that_ ends, but this is way more important._ _

__You toss a clean pair of pants in Dave's direction, which he manages to snatch out of the air one-handed. His other hand is vigorously drying his hair. "Get dressed," you tell him, "we're going to go get a room somewhere with a bed that doesn't look like a crackhead died in it."_ _

__He hasn't put on his shades yet, so you can watch his face twist up. It starts with his eyebrows (they're still ridiculously dark compared to the rest of his hair), and you can see how he got that worry line between them because they both just sort of bunch up together. Next, his eyes narrow until he looks like he's squinting at something really far away. Finally, his lip curls up into a sneer. "What the _actual fuck_?" he demands._ _

__You meet his eyes and spread your hands in a vaguely placating gesture. "What? I'm not leaving until you agree to come home, and us staying here is _not_ an option."_ _

__He actually growls, like a pissed off puppy or a rabid chipmunk. You'd laugh, but the next thing you know he's thrown himself at your mid-section and bowled you both over onto the bed. The rusty frame freaks ominously under the combined force of two strapping young fellows crashing down on it. Dave is less dense than you, but his bony elbow catches your solar plexus and effectively knocks the wind from you. "You got _no fucking right!_ " he snarls. "Just waltz on in and try to tell me what to do with my shitstain of a life like you're still some fucking 'friendleader palhoncho' guy!" You manage to shove him off you but when you try to put your feet back under you, he lashes out with an arm right to your sternum that's calculated to send you sprawling back on the bed. Then you find him perched on your chest looking wild-eyed and angry. "You don't get to tell me if I'm allowed to try to waste the rest of my life drunk in a shithole or not!"_ _

__"And why the fuck not?!" you explode, planting your hands on his chest and pushing him off you again. He tumbles ass-over-tea-kettle onto the floor, and you waste no time standing yourself upright. "We didn't win that stupid fucking game and go through five years of all that _stuff_ \--" you flail vaguely (as if that were a sufficient gesture to describe foster care), "--just to get in the clear and watch you do this!" The volume of your voice has steadily been rising, such that you're practically shouting now even as your brain is fumbling for the right words, "Don't you get it? You're really, really, really, really important to me-- us! We care about you a whole lot and we've seen you die about fifty million more times than we ever wanted to and I am not going to let you do this!"_ _

__You didn't expect half those things to leave your mouth, and you don't expect the almost deadly silence that follows. Nor do you expect Dave to haul off and slug you in the jaw. That's why you're not a Seer, you reflect briefly as you teeter back onto the bed again (ugh). When did Dave get such a mean right hook? Roxy would be proud._ _

__Over the sound of blood rushing in your ears, Dave rants, "You bulge-licking, wrinkle-fucking asshole! You've got _no fucking right_ to stop me from making my own decisions, and you know what? You should be giving me a friendly helping hand if you actually cared!" He bunches his hands in the front of your shirt and hauls you upright. His next words are low and intense. "But since you're evidently too brain dead to figure that out on your own, let me get my Rose on and wax fucking eloquent."_ _

__His breath smells stale, like the cigarettes he's been smoking, and this close you can see the dark circles under his eyes. He looks so focused as he takes in a shuddering breath. You can see that in his head, he's standing on the precipice of something; you can tell his resolve to do _whatever_ is wavering, but you're afraid that if you make a move, you might nudge him over the edge. So you just stare at him wide-eyed and wait._ _

__Finally, Dave breaks the silence. "Why are you even here, Egbert?"_ _

__You keep your words as soft and unthreatening as possible. He might not be growling like an angry puppy, but you're still not sure that he won't try to bite your face off right now, either. "I came to bring you home. Duh." You throw in a lop-sided smile for good measure._ _

__"I already fucked it up, bro," he says. He's looking at his hands now, instead of your face. "Just gonna fuck it up again because that's what I do. You're better off without me, and if you had one ounce of decency in you, and I know you do 'cause I've seen it, you'd just step aside and let me do my thing."_ _

__That's the second time he's talked about you being better off without him, and you simply cannot wrap your mind around how he could come to that conclusion. He's your best friend. He's saved your life more times you can count. He's been there for you for over half your life (if you count the time in-game toward time lived, which you do sometimes). "Dave... dude, you're so wrong." With as much gentleness as you can manage, you reach up and pry Dave's fingers out of your shirt. It takes a lot of work, and he ends up just clutching at your hands just as tightly. "What we've got... our home, it doesn't work if there's only three of us. It's gotta be the whole gang, or it's just a couple of sad kids pretending they're grown ups in the big city."_ _

__Your phone vibrates over on the card table._ _

__You ignore it._ _

__"I don't believe this," Dave mumbles. "I don't believe you." He looks like he's about to say something else, but then changes his mind. "Fuck it, fine."_ _

__"Is that 'fuck it, fine, I'll come home now?'" you ask._ _

__"No, that's 'fuck it, fine, I'll put on some goddamn pants and get a room at a fancy hotel with you as long as I get dibs on the mini-bar,'" he says._ _

__You suddenly notice that, in the scuffle, Dave lost his towel and it now lies crumpled forlornly on the floor at your feet. You're pretty sure it's a metaphor for your dignity at this particular moment. You squeeze your eyes shut. "Fine, sure, whatever, put your pants on and let's go."_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm putting the notes at the end because I want people to be able to skip them if they so chose.
> 
> Basically, a lot has happened since last I posted an update. I've gotten a full-time job (which has since promoted me), been accepted into the Dragon*Con art show, spent time staring down my looming wedding, had a lot of ups and downs, and just generally been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I didn't think I had the time or the energy to work on this fic. I thought, "Oh, I'll work on it when life slows down a little."
> 
> But that's the thing, life DOESN'T slow down, does it? And if I want to actually finish a written work for once in my life, I have to MAKE time for it. I've been through a lot of things that have made it really difficult for me to feel creative, but I made a promise to myself that I was going to change that. The only way to do that is to keep writing/drawing. So some of this feels a little disingenuous to me because I felt really weird writing on it again. But I want to finish it, and the only way to do that is keep working on it.
> 
> So if you made it through the story and the hiatus thus-far and this author's note, thank you. :)


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